2022_03_15 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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made up of representatives from various agencies and groups so, for instance, we have currently people from the forest service – Fish & Wildlife Service, Hawaii Volcanos National Park, we have DOFAW reps on there, academia, we have UH-Hilo. I actually heard the voice of one of our steering committee members from CTAHR – J B Friday – we have County of Hawaii, R & D, non-profits: currently we’re working with Malama o Puna, and watershed partnerships – so that changes sometimes but those are generally the areas that are represented. We are a 100% grant funded program so while the bulk of our funding comes through grants from the HIISC – each year the Legislature makes an allocation of money to the Hawaiian Invasive Species Council which then runs a grant program that various folks who work in invasive species across the Islands can apply for money and it’s sent to you – we really depend on that funding but we have to compete with everybody else – but we also search for grant funds from various sources and this year this is some of our funders and that changes from year to year depending on what grants we get. So why is this such a big concern? Currently, Hawaii is already home to 50 of the world’s 100 worst invasive species as designated by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature which is sort of part of the UN and that’s not a static number – so while we already have half of those 100 worst invasives which are found in multiple countries all around the world there is a lot of traffic going/coming into Hawaii so you can look at the top three numbers – they’re kind of big numbers representing what’s coming in to Hawaii and that bottom 82 – that’s how many people that we have total for all of the Islands for inspection at our ship ports and our airports – 82 people for the entire State, every airport, every ship port – 365 days a year – 7 days a week – 24 hours a day – so we’re up against quite an onslaught. Estimates of what’s arriving here – just with insects – this study was done about 20 years ago so we actually think at this point this has probably increased but at that point it was estimated it was about one new insect species arriving in Hawaii every day. Now, not all of that 365 species are gonna survive – most of them are not gonna be able to cope with Hawaii and they’ll pass away – but about 17, it’s estimated, will establish whether those become invasive or not – we won’t know until/unless they start causing harm so we’re still constantly getting an onslaught of accidentally introduced species that could potentially become invasive. This is kind of problematic because the best medicine is prevention – when you look at the cost of invasive species – the cheapest and most effective is sort of getting into that first block which his prevention – just keeping it from ever getting here in the first place. If it does get here – the next best thing is to find it very early and be able to get rid of it. But, unfortunately, a lot of the time that window slams shut very quickly, particularly for things like insects where there isn’t a lot of time before it’s passed that point and then you get into when people first start to notice it it’s probably already too late or close to too late and then you get into different kinds of management strategies. So, again, that prevention – mainly the prevention people in Hawaii are the Department of Agriculture, there’s the USDA and then there’s HGOA – Department of Transportation’s involved – sort of those people that are the front lines and then that last bit sort of when you get into management that tends to fall to the landowners – so whether that’s the State managing forest reserves or Kamehameha Schools or it could just be a private landowner managing their own residence – that’s where you get into trying to keep things out or trying to manage what’s on your land. But in-between is sort of where BIISC works which is that early detection and eradication. Well, our history has generally been botanical so we mostly deal with plant species, so if you’re familiar with the history of invasive plants on Hawaii Island – sort of the first really noteworthy one was miconia and BIISC evolved out of the Big Island Miconia Task Force that was formed in the 90’s – a lot of people think that the goal of that task force was to eradicate miconia from the Big Island but it was actually already recognized by the late 90’s that miconia was not an eradicable species on the Big Island so the goal was really to 5